…The debt ceiling that is.

This entry from “Evilblog” is railing against the Republicans for not raising the debt ceiling.

I’m actually kind of proud of the Republicans at this moment. They are sticking to good, solid Conservative values. Fiscal responsibility and just plain keeping your word.

Evil blog says,

They could just raise the damn debt ceiling tomorrow like Congresses in the past have done 74 times without any problems.

And he’s right, they could. Just let America get deeper into debt, and make it just that longer to get out of debt. But the House has finally cut the alcoholic off by refusing to serve the government any more booze, because the Government spends money like a drunken sailor.

“But it will wreck America’s Credit!!!!11!!!” And….? Maybe it needs wrecking, to tell you the truth. It’s already so bad that we are printing money to buy our own Treasury notes so the spending can continue because no one, not even the Chinese, will buy our debt.

I’ll admit, I and my company will be drastically affected if Medicaid spending is drastically cut. I could lose my job. But something has to be done about America’s debt problem.

Adding taxes is a great way to ruin an already weakened economy. A long term stabilization program needs to be laid out. At a minimum, the next 10 years needs to see a promise to cut, or at least not raise the tax rates on businesses. It is this uncertainy that is preventing small business (which is 80+% of the employers in this nation) from hiring and expanding their business.

This is the place, and now is the time to hold the line and start being fiscally responsible.

Go get ‘em, Boehner. You have my support.

…Those who earned the money should keep it?

I happened across this article, “America Needs Taxes,” and I find it a bunch of hooey.

Like this statement:

In fact, Eisenhower, a Republican, presided over an era where corporate taxes accounted for a quarter of all federal tax receipts, and the richest Americans still enjoyed their wealth while paying a 90% top tax rate. Americans were never more prosperous as a whole than during that era.

It took some digging, and it’s like comparing Granny Smith apples to McIntosh apples, but I found that Federal tax revenues declined under Eisenhower. However, under JFK’s posthumous and Reagan’s tax cuts, Federal revenues increased. I can’t dig up W’s tax rate numbers, But I do know that the revenue numbers were mixed. But considering what the country was going through in our post 9/11 world, it could have been much worse.

Keynesian economics suck. Debt is not acceptable as a “percentage of our GDP.” Especially when you’re talking about $7,000,000,000,000. Yes, that is the number for $7 trillion. Why? Because if the GDP falls to a disaster, we default on our loans. Let’s put it this way: No debt, no risk. As Dave Ramsey says, “100% of the home foreclosures had a mortgage on them.”

Getting back to taxes. If you let people, especially business owners, keep their own money, they will likely invest it some way. The smart ones at least. If business owners can believe things like, the government won’t take over their business, or taxes aren’t going up, then they will invest their money back into the business. This will grow the business, and he will have to hire people. When you hire an unemployed person, they go from being a “tax consumer” (i.e., on food stamps, unemployment, etc., consuming governmental services) to being a “tax producer” (someone who pays taxes). This lowers the costs of the government and increases their tax revenue. The person has a job, the business owner gets more money because his capacity (and business) have expanded, and the government gets more money. Win-Win-Win.

Now, let’s look at it the other way. The government raises taxes, the business owner cuts back on his business because he can’t afford the tax burden, so he lays people off. They go from tax producers to tax consumers. The business makes less money, so the owner pays less in taxes. Sure, tax revenues go up, for a while. Until the downturn hits, then the death spiral starts, more taxes leads to less people working, and so on.

We see this in all the Liberal cities. Detroit, New York, Chicago and so on.

So, we come back to my original point, whatever happened to the concept of letting the people keep the money that they earned?

To think that America is a static pot of money where someone has to lose for someone else to win is ludicrous. America is an ever growing pie, and everyone has pretty much the same chance to get ahead that anybody else does. It all depends on how much you are willing to work. Liberals have the opposite view. They believe that everyone needs to cross the finish line at the same time, no matter how far you have to run. Some will have to run a marathon, while others may only have to walk a foot.

Think about that.

This weekend is not about barbecues, or car sales, or furniture sales.

This weekend is meant to remember my battle brothers and sisters, who went out to protect our country and our way of life, and who never came back.

Please visit a veterans cemetery this weekend, and thank them for your freedom. Tread lightly, heroes lie sleeping there.

Always remember this:

It is the VETERAN, not the preacher,
who has given us freedom of religion.

It is the VETERAN, not the reporter,
who has given us freedom of the press.

It is the VETERAN, not the poet,
who has given us freedom of speech.

It is the VETERAN, not the campus organizer,
who has given us freedom to assemble.

It is the VETERAN, not the lawyer,
who has given us the right to a fair trial.

It is the VETERAN, not the politician,
who has given us the right to vote.

It is the VETERAN who salutes the flag,
who serves under the flag, and who’s
coffin is draped by the flag.

Take this story with a grain of salt. I heard it third hand, but it sounds not only plausible, but probable.

If you don’t know who the Westboro  Baptist Church is, then you’ve been living under a rock. This is a group of idiots who protest the funerals of our fallen heroes with signs like “Thank God for IED’s” and other idiotic thoughts. Their position is because the government supports gay marriage and other gay rights, our brave soldiers are getting what they deserve.

Well, one of these heroes was from the deep part of Mississippi. Several cultists members of this church came down to protest the funeral. One found himself alone at a gas station, where he had the crap beat out of him. When the police showed up, the twenty or so people milling around the area didn’t see or hear a thing, and had no idea that anything had happened.

The day of the funeral, pickup trucks mysteriously parked themselves behind any car with a Kansas license plate at the local hotel, blocking the vehicles in. The police came and called for some tow trucks, but it seems they were all busy and could not show up for several hours. One carload did manage to get out of the hotel parking lot, and when the nutjobs protesters made it to the funeral site, the Sheriff promptly detained and questioned them for several hours concerning a crime in the area. After several hours of questioning, and well after the hero was laid to rest, the Sheriff determined the protesters had no connection to the crime and released them.

You will find no bigger proponent of the Constitution, especially the First Amendment than myself. However, I also believe your right to swing your arms however you want to stops at my nose. When you protest a funeral, you add unnecessary anguish on top of already unbearable agony of those left behind. While I might do a Snoopy dance if certain people drop dead (nobody in particular), I would not do it publicly, especially around the mourners.

Too bad this doesn’t happen more often. The protesters might get a clue and stop and keep their opinions to themselves.

Well, President Obama finally showed some guts and okayed the operation that killed Bin Laden. I will give the President props for that.

What gets me upset is they treated the body with respect and buried it in Muslim fashion. Since the Muslim extremists have no trouble desecrating the bodies of our dead, I personally think they should have rubbed the body up with bacon grease, put a strip of bacon in his mouth, and chummed the water well before dumping the body into a pack of hungry sharks.

I was told a story a while back about General “Black Jack” Pershing. It seems that he had a Muslim insurrection somewhere (I can’t find anything on this story). He desecrated the bodies similar as to what I described above. It seems the other side lost their will to fight when they found out they weren’t going to heaven and their virgins because they were buried with pork in their mouths. Like I said, I can find no evidence supporting this story, but I think we should start treating the bodies of the Muslim extremists with the same level of respect they treat ours.

I am truly sorry that things like this happen. To hear about people gunned down, no matter their political persuasion is always a tragedy. My heart and prayers go out to the victims and their families.

I am personally enraged by posts like this and this from Liberal bloggers. They never fail to politicize a tragedy when they think they can profit and advance their agenda on it.

The shooter was not a “right-wing nutjob.” He is a person with a serious mental illness. And just like the shooting at Fort Bragg, everyone saw the signs, but no one expended the effort to actually do something and help the person.

I am not justifying the actions of this murderer; I am trying to give you an insight into his head and thought processes. Jared Loughner was and is a person with a severe mental illness. I am not a doctor, but as a person with similar experiences, I feel confident to say that this person suffers from some kind of psychosis.

I used to suffer psychotic breaks. Which means my thought processes would suddenly change. I would go off into my own world, existing exclusively in my head. My thoughts made perfect sense, to me and me alone. It was because of these psychotic breaks that my wife, in self-defense of her and our son, would tell me to get out. So, I would pick up a backpack and walk out of the house for 2-4 days, until I returned to reality.

I have done things like try to walk to my sisters house (she lives 750 miles away in Ohio), walk out into traffic (yes, I got hit; I broke my right wrist and leg.) and one night, instead of leaving the house, I grabbed my wife by the throat and almost killed her.

Now, some will say my Conservativeism stems from my mental illness (“He’s Conservative, therefore he’s crazy”) and that accusation has been made against me before. Nothing could be farther from the truth, but it does explain why the Left must demonize anybody who does not hold their world view. I think they’re wrong, they think I’m insane, evil, or both. It’s kind of hard to hold rational discussions when one side thinks the other is evil. You can’t even agree to disagree.

Getting back to Lean Left, it starts out:

TRIGGER WARNING: Failure to take right-wing bullshit seriously. May cause discomfort among those who cannot bear to have their fantasies punctured.
The suspected shooter in this case harbored obviously right-wing obsessions, but was not consistent in this respect, and seems too weird to easily classify. But the link between his fixations and derangements, and the eliminationist and violent rhetoric of the right wing that shared many of his political obsessions, is obvious and significant.

I love this. “The suspected shooter in this case harbored obviously right-wing obsessions, but was not consistent in this respect…” Which, what? He “harbored” left-wing obsessions as well, but you don’t want to talk about them?

History is replete with examples of Left wing extremist groups attempting to destabilize our government back in the 60’s with acts of violence. Weather Underground anybody? I don’t think I have to go into any detailed history, unless you believe the rewritten history books. Suffice it to say that the Left is not above violence when they think it will accomplish their objectives. But they are perfectly comfortable in pointing their finger to the extreme Right and say, “See? They do it! And they use guns as well! THEY’RE THE EVIL ONES!”

I would love to really fisk both posts, but I do not have the time nor inclination. Suffice it to say that they are on the wrong side of this. This tragedy was not orchestrated by a rational person, rather a tragically untreated person. If they actually lived up to their own standards, (“It takes a village” and all that) then someone would have spoken up and tried to get him help, rather than recoiling in horror and sweeping him under the carpet.

Here’s something to think about: Democrats think the Constitution is ‘weird.’

It’s a very good article about how the Democrats don’t think anything about passing any law they want, and never mind that piddling document written by dead white men called the “Constitution.”

The Constitution, with all its messy checks and balances and its attempt to limit government to only certain “enumerated powers,” is little more than a nuisance. “I don’t worry about the Constitution,” if it gets in the way of passing legislation, Rep. Phil Hare (D., Ill.) told a town-hall meeting. And Rep. James Clyburn (D., S.C.), the third-highest-ranking Democrat in the House, proudly told Fox News, “There’s nothing in the Constitution that says that the federal government has anything to do with most of the stuff we do.”

But it’s not just about the Democrats, there is a dig in there against the Republicans as well.

A truly constitutional view of federal power might discomfort conservatives as well. It is one thing for tea-partiers to carry around a copy of the Constitution or for candidates to call themselves “constitutional conservatives.” The test will be when their idea of a good federal program conflicts with the Constitution.

For instance, it would be hard to find the constitutional provision allowing Congress to play sheriff by federalizing every crime that catches the headlines. A strict reading of the Constitution would make it much harder for presidents to intervene militarily around the world without a congressional declaration of war. Any number of conservative pet projects from faith-based initiatives to federal drug laws would fail the constitutional test. Conservatives might have to accept the idea that the Constitution does not empower the federal government to enforce the nation’s morality.

It is most certainly harder to fight for your ideals than to live up to them. I have certainly fallen short of my ideals, many times. But I strive for them, work for them, sweat for them. That’s better than the other side, which is trying to tear down everything I’m trying to build.

And I’ll leave the final thought by one of those Dead White Guys:

Thomas Jefferson warned, “An elective despotism was not the government we fought for.”

Here is a classic Liberal tactic. Scream that something is wrong, but quietly say that its okay. Charlotte Bergmann receives a salary from her campaign

The story opens with this:

Republican 9th District congressional candidate Charlotte Bergmann is receiving a salary from her campaign committee that her campaign manager maintains is both nominal and within federal guidelines.

So, in the first paragraph the Republican campaign is deliberately put on the defensive so they have to prove they are doing things legally, instead of the paper having to prove they are breaking FEC rules.

But you see, this is a woman who, by her own admission, slept in a car while going to college because she was homeless. This woman pulled herself up by her bootstraps. Charlotte has to give up her paid work to campaign, while Steve Cohen doesn’t have to give up a penny? And the paper is going to press over $3,160 worth of legally transferred money. Talk about being a shill for the incumbent.

The paper gets one expert who admits that “she has no empirical data,” but she also says, “My sense is that its fairly rare.” So this expert doesn’t have any data one way or the other, but she feels that its not used that often.

And of course, incumbent Steve Cohen doesn’t do it. He isn’t allowed to do it, being the incumbent. But that’s beside the point. Then again, he does get $174,000 a year salary for his job. I wonder, if we paid him by the hour, and took out the time he was campaigning on the clock, how much he would really get.

I happened across this post, Do the Math from Born Again Hippies, and I just had to say something.

First of all,

If George W. Bush dug us into an eight year hole, how is Barack Obama supposed to dig us out in two?

Lets get this straight, shall we?

First of all, the President has NO control over governmental spending. Congress spends the money. If you dont believe that, just look it up in that archaic document, the Constitution. He proposes budgets, he can ask for things, but thats it. It takes a lowly Congressman to propose spending the Peoples money, not the President.

Second, President Obama has driven us father into debt than every President before him. Combined. Bush may have been using a shovel to get us into debt, but Obama went and got a backhoe and kept digging.

I didnt like President Bushs economic policies. I supported him overall, especially with the wars we have fought since 9/11, but expanding social programs is not compassionate conservatism. Conservatives are supposed to count how many got off the Welfare roles, rather then how many are on it.

Paulson was wrong in pushing for TARP to save those Too Big To Fail companies. FDRs social policies (just like what Obamas policies are now) extended the depression. The only thing that brought us out of it was WWII.

Lets look at it this way. Your neighbor just lost his job. Do you think it is good sense for you, who wants to help, to give him cash advances from your credit cards to help keep him afloat? No, of course not. You are not going to put yourself at risk for great financial harm by going into debt to extend the misery of your neighbor. If you wont do it on a personal level, why do it on a governmental level?

The post also goes on to talk about the obstructionist Republicans. Um, hey dude. DEMOCRATS HAVE CONTROL OF BOTH HOUSES. THEY DONT NEED TO WORK WITH REPUBLICANS. THEY CAN PASS ANYTHING THEY WANT. Sure, the Republicans can bitch and moan all they want, they might even filibuster, but in the end, it was the radicalness of the Health Care Plan and other Liberal agenda items that kept the Blue Dog Democrats from voting for it until certain changes were made.

Getting to the tax cuts part of the post, lets get this straight. How many poor people create jobs? How many rich people create jobs? If people with money are allowed to keep it, those that are businesspeople will invest it into growing their business. That means more jobs. If the government takes the money through high tax rates, how can they invest it? JFK, Reagan and W all got Congress cut taxes (remember, Congress controls the money), and all saw economic growth in their administrations. And economic growth means MORE income for the government. Way beyond predictions.

Which would you rather have, 40% of three dollars, or 80% of one? Do the math, and get back to me on that.

Here you go. The Tax Tsunami On The Horizon.

Your taxes are going to go up because the President wants to spread the wealth around. In other words, the government is going to take away what you have earned and give it to someone who hasn’t earned it. You can read the article for the particulars about what the tax rates are going to do, and the return of the Death Tax, and so on.

Why would someone want to take away your hard earned money? Because he thinks you stole it from the poor. Instead of helping to poor with a hand up instead of a hand out, he exercises control over the lowest part of the economic ladder. He cuts the rungs out of the ladder so they can’t advance, thus keeping them on the dole, barely subsisting and dependent on the government for their very existence. The only thing spoon-feeding teaches is the shape of the spoon.

So, by letting the Bush tax cuts expire, our taxes will go up starting January 1, 2011. If you have a rich relative almost dead at the end of the year, you better hope they pass before midnight or their estate will be subject to a 55% death tax on estates over $1 million. If someone leaves a farm to you next year, you’ll have to sell it to pay the tax on the estate bill.

I heard a remark from my Congressman this morning on my way into the store, “Tax cuts should be targeted and temporary.”

Nevermind the facts that when you cut taxes, economic growth goes through the roof. But you see, those in power at the moment don’t want that, except for themselves. They would rather see the economy limp along, nobody getting rich and everybody one step away from economic ruin.

Vote the bastards out this November. That includes both parties. Vote someone new in, someone who understands that the government derives its power from the consent of the governed. Don’t vote for someone who thinks they know better than you.

The time for rescuing our country is quickly closing. Our debt is climbing at a hundred thousand dollars every 3.5 seconds, the load is, as I write this, per citizen is $42,328. And its going up by a dollar every 40 minutes. Thats $36 a day every citizen is owing that much in their fair share of the national debt.

We dont have a Liberal President, he is an unabashed Socialist. He has openly acclaimed his distain for private business, and favors taxing the rich until they are rich no more. If you and your spouse are making $50,000+ each per year, guess what? Youre rich.

Our illustrious President is an integral part of the corrupt Chicago political machine, where union thugs are used to enforce the will of those in charge, namely President Obama. But you have to wonder, whos on the other end of his Blackberry? Obama fought hard to keep it, and as the most powerful man in the world, you dont need email, you have dozens of staffers doing mundane tasks as that. Unless you want to keep the man behind the curtain back there. President Obama is communicating with somebody, and it is likely outside of a .gov email address.

The expansion of Federal (and personal Presidential) power is growing by leaps and bounds, all be Executive order, or by union force. Obama has taken over personal control of the banking industry, the auto industry, and the health care industry. Unless he is stopped, he will have enforced massive and detailed governmental control over every large industry on American soil.

Remember these things when it comes Election Day. Everyone says Throw the bums out! except for their Congressman, hes okay. If he voted for the bailout(s) and the health care bill, hes not okay, he needs to go, and your vote, when applied to his opposing candidate, counts towards getting rid of him. Dont sit home and think everyone else will vote him out, YOU HAVE TO.

Remember what Conservatives stand for. Smaller government, Cutting Federal spending. Having a surplus, not deficit. Paying off, not expanding the debt. Lower taxes. Helping those who cannot help themselves. Giving a hand up, not a hand out to those who can help themselves.

These are not mutually exclusive things. Lower taxes means more economic growth, which results in more tax revenues, not less. With cutting spending, increased tax revenues mans we can start paying off our debt. Helping those who are disabled is Gods work, and is a necessary duty of government. It is understood there is times when a family or a citizen falls on hard times and cannot support themselves. This is when a hand up should be offered. Retraining, or other temporary help is dictated at this point. However, those who existing for years on food stamps or give birth to child after child to increase income from the government do not deserve this help.

For those of you who might think Im a hypocrite, Let me explain a few things. I became disabled in January 1999. And I remained on that disability until December 2008. That disability money went to my family because I could not support them. I was working, part time the first moment I could. I worked continuously from that point until I was able to be hired at a job that paid enough so that I could support myself and my family. Thats when my disability stopped. This is the definition of a hand up, not a hand out. I did not sit on my butt waiting for the Welfare check to come, I was out there humping it as best I could, every second I could.

Some people, due to their mental illness, developmental disability or physical disability will never be able to work. Those who will never be able to work deserve help. Those who can work, but who are illiterate because they chose to be by dropping out of school to join a gang, or have a baby, they need to live with the consequences of their actions.

As an additional disclosure, when I bought my home, I took part in that $8,000 first time home buyers program. This is another instance of a hand up, not hand out. I would have bought this home without that tax credit, but it enabled me to purchase better appliances, and hold on to more savings for those expenses that a homeowner inevitably has. I did not buy a home that I could not reasonably afford, on a note that Im paying off early. I have been a good steward of the money entrusted to me by the government.

Back to our original point. There are hands up, and there are hands out. Know the difference.

Cutting the budget back is going to hurt everybody. It will quite possibly cause a lot of chaos for a period of time. But when we, as a people, come out of that time realizing that we have been living on credit cards for too long, we will be a stronger country.

The first step is we have to get rid of the entitlement mentality. We have to restore a sense of the rugged individualism that this country was founded upon. Once we get on that road, we will be moving toward greatness again.

I have told my son multiple times, when faced with a decision, the hard choice is the right choice at least 99% of the time. We have taken the easy choice for far too long.

Cowboy up, America.